Pendarvis Harshaw

Coatlicue drummers and dancers occupied the island between East and West-bound traffic on International Blvd in Oakland, as they celebrated and prayed. With shells at their ankles and feathers on their crowns, over a dozen people congregated and moved to the beat. Smoke from lit herbs such as sage filled the intersection. Police directed traffic around the celebration, as passersby honked and waved.

There’s a parking lot in East Oakland. You know the one. It’s nestled between the Amtrak Train tracks to the east and Highway 880 to the west, and bordered by a murky moat-like creek called Damon Slough…and all three of the city’s major sports teams play in either the O.co Coliseum on one side, or…

In early March, Skyline High School and the Oakland Unified School District resolved a complaint filed by the high school’s Black Student Union nearly a year ago. The resolution could change how students file complaints, allow random audits of students’ class schedules, offer training for teachers on how to deal with complaints of racial discrimination,…

Oakland North tagged along as people of all ages, and even a dog or two made their way to O. Co Coliseum to watch the home team square off against the Seattle Mariners. We talked to a guy who has seen too many players come and go every year, a person who has seen 40 opening day games in Oakland and a dog owner who thinks the A’s are going all the way!

On Friday, the Betti Ono art gallery in downtown Oakland hosted a panel discussion about women and Hip-Hop. The “My Art, My Culture: Women, media, and Hip-Hop” three-part discussion was the product of the combined efforts of a number of Bay Area arts organizations including Beats, Rhymes, and Life, which uses Hip-Hop to empower young people, and the Daughters of Dilla Project, which offers media arts programs for girls.

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and a number of famous African Americans ancestors made an appearance at an elementary school in East Oakland on the final day of Black History Month. Ancestor Day 2013 at Ile Omode, a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school in East Oakland, consisted of four and five year-old students dressing up as…

“My last trip in the penitentiary, I had to make a decision on what I wanted to do with my life,” said Reggie Bailey, sitting in the swiveling barber chair in his small shop in the heart of downtown Oakland. “I just decided to go to barber college.”

It’s Saturday afternoon at the African American Museum in Oakland, and archivist Sean Heyliger is showing a small group how best to preserve and care for old photos as part of an open house for Black History Month.

On a Saturday afternoon in July, 2011, Kenneth Harding Jr., 19, lay stomach down in his own blood, fighting for his life on the corner of 3rd Street and Palou Avenue in the heart of the Bay View Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco. Some say San Francisco police officers shot Harding after he allegedly evaded…

Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre will host the world premiere of the newly released documentary “The Black Fatherhood Project” on Thursday evening. Director Jordan Thierry said the film has been in the making for more than five years, but tells a story that has been in the making since the formation of this country.

Price has a special vantage point on the Resolution Plan, given the fact that he was once a disobedient student, and now sometimes works with students with behavioral issues. He’s a little ambivalent, he said—because he understands how tough classroom teaching can really be. On the one hand, he said, monitoring their own disciplinary actions more closely will push teachers to find resolutions to kids’ problematic classroom behaviors, without kicking them out so readily. “It will cause teachers to deal...

The Linden Street Brewery is small and unpretentious, but its owners are proud of their brewing tradition, which goes back to the early 1800’s, when settlers from Germany first made Oakland their home. The West Coast tradition of brewing, or the California lager, is a steam-brewed ale that is made at a temperature closer to that of lagers. This method creates a “hoppy, more bitter taste”, says Andrew Ritter, lead brewer at Linden Street.

The New Parkway is nearly 8,000 square feet, has two floors and features two screening rooms with a seating capacity of 145 and 125 people each. The theater will have a full commercial kitchen and a café from which people will be able to order pizza, burgers, fries, salads, soups and appetizers, as well as vegetarian and vegan options.

Kevin Weston doesn’t remember doctors saying he had two weeks to live. He doesn’t remember his 44th birthday. He doesn’t remember his own wedding, though he says he’s seen the photos: Weston in a white hospital gown, eyes closed, with an extremely swollen face. In some photos he has tubes and monitors attached to his…

The incident isn’t something that is new in Gutierrez’s generation or in Oakland. The Mentoring Center, a non-profit organization located in Oakland’s Preservation Parkway, focuses on community change through working with previously incarcerated youth. The organization looks to end cycles of disrespect, starting with teaching others to respect themselves.

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Oakland North is an online news service produced by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism for, and about, the people of Oakland, California. Our goal is to produce professional and engaging journalism that is useful for the citizens of the city.